Family Stories - The Earldom Lineage

Niven has
written that every branch with the exception of four
have held the Earldom Lineage.10
Given that R.W. Saint-Clair identified
34 cadet branches of our family in Scotland in his 19th Century book,
that leaves 30 branches with direct ties to the Earldom Lineage.

Webster’s defines an Earldom as “a member
of the
British peerage ranking below a marquess and above a
viscount.”

Etymology: Middle English erl, from Old English eorl warrior, nobleman;
akin to Old Norse jarl warrior, nobleman -- Date: 12th century

The definition and the era connote that the phrase 'Earl' carried
land and title. DNA does not acknowledge titles or land holdings. Given
that we have as many as seven lineages in our family, the Earldom could
have been held by at least 3 of these. Keep in mind that the timing of
the mutations which led to our distinct lineages could well have been
as far back as 25,000 years ago, long before Earl William of Roslyn (E1b1 lineage to others, and 3,270 years S21 to others 154).

When someone wants to connect to the Earldom lineage, what you must ask
is – when. Because the title changed hands and
moved
between family branches who may have thought they were related but
likely were not.

“The
Caithness line of descent was fascinating as the legitimate male line
died out several times. When the deceased earl died with no heir, the
search was on through the family tree for the next eligible Sinclair.

Alexander
9th
Earl of Caithness was the third and last of the Murkle line of earls.
The descendants of David of Broynach should have succeeded him but were
denied the earldom because the marriage of David of Broynach and Janet
Ewins could not be proven satisfactorily.” 108
- Rhondo Blue, in a very succinct summary on a Yahoo discussion group

So you can see that the fact they all carried the surname
doesn’t
guarantee they share a common ancestor within 3,000 years or more.

However, while the direct male descendant line died out,
the line's DNA trail likely continue on to the present day. Second sons
of second sons surely survived and
had male children that lived on. A good reading of Caithness family
history in Roland William Saint-Clair's book shows several lines where
he simply stopped tracing the descendants, focusing instead on the
lines that held the Earldom.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Many of those who seek to
establish a
connection to the ‘Earldom Lineage’ all want to
connect to
William of the 1400’s who built Rosslyn Chapel. Thus,
they’ll be descended from all the mysteries of our family -
the
Merovingian line, the Cathars, Rennes-le-Château, and from
the
Holy Grail itself. Who among us wouldn’t want to prove that?
I sure wanted to early on. However, lately, I've found the more
everyday history of our family far more interesting.

Our separation into as many as seven lineages cannot be accounted for
by mutations that occurred since William “The
Seemly” St.
Clair (and likely others) first set foot in Scotland. All five to seven
distinct mutations (with perhaps one exception) had already occurred by
1066. Thus, there were four to six other lineages yet to get to
Scotland. And we can’t leave out England. Both Niven and
Beryl
Platts have long scolded us for being to Scot-centric, when those who
understand the wider history of the region know the St. Clair family
influenced
events from Norway, to Flanders, to Normandy and France, to England and
Scotland.

And let’s not fail to question our own family bible, R.W.
Saint-Clair’s “Saint-Clairs of the
Isles,” the
definitive history of our family. Dare I say it? He could have made
mistakes. R.W. was also apparently looking for that one true line of
St. Clairs going back, unbroken, to the Viking Rognvald and into the
misty and enviable history of the Norse.

Such a direct and singular goal of research can cause one to overlook
the most blindingly obvious pieces of evidence. Such as all the places
in France from which our surname could have come and which could
account for so many very distantly related lineages – St.
Clair
sur l'Epte, St. Clair-sur-Lo, St. Clair Sur Elle, all these became
place names for families that were likely not closely related at the
time. Add to this Hugh Montgomery’s email to me that he has
seen
ancient records of our family name in Southern France as well.

We know of at least four places from which the surname may have been
taken. Yet R.W. Saint-Clair then goes on to look for his one, true,
unbroken line of descent from Rogenvald and Rollo. But who can blame
him? This is the lure of genealogy.

Most of us don’t descend from Earl William of Rosslyn. I can
state this flatly. Some of us are S21+, some are S21-. Some of us are
DYS390=23, some =24, some =25, some =26. All of the separations between
our lineages predate the 1400’s by many thousands of years.
Our
five or seven lineages are showing genetic distances that are far
enough apart that some are not connecting until at least 3,900 years
ago and some much further. All of the above is proof that we can’t ALL share the
same
ancestor from the 1400’s.

The question remains, which of our lineages descends from Earl William
of Rosslyn? The answer is, it could be one of five lineages. And there
are limited ways ot proving exactly which one.

Originally, I’d said that Ian Clennel and Niven’s
research
was carried out by two independent parties. This proved not to be the
case. Both were helped by Margaret Stokes. I had been very excited
about the credibility that such independent research might bring to
each person’s research, then to be verified by DNA.

Documents research is always open to debate. While you say you connect
to someone, all you can really prove is that you are going down the
same lines. You can rarely pinpoint with absolute certainty who was the
most recent common ancestor (MRCA) unless it's more recent.

A genetic distance of 3 on the faster mutating alleles means that Niven
and Ian don't share a common ancestor in the last 200 or 300 years.
That's pretty certain. And their documents research proves they DO
share a common ancestor no earlier than the 1st Earl of Caithness. So,
sometime in between those two times, they have a common grandfather.

Documents comparisons will shortly clear up whom that MRCA
is.
There is only ONE correct line of direct male-to-male (YDNA) documents research. There are
THOUSANDS of wrong possibilities. This lineage has become the oldest
documented connection in our project and, I suspect, one of the older
ones in any family project anywhere.

In looking closely at the exact markers that have mutated (the genetic
distance of 3) you'll note that all of these are red numbers. This
means they're alleles that are known to mutate faster than the norm.
The point it, this genetic distance of 3 could mean they share a MRCA
in less than 400 years. Again, a documents comparison will clear this
up.

What this all means is a very important point for our project. Ian's
line has been factually traced back to the mid 1600s, however family
legend, passed to Ian from an aunt, stated that the line went back to
the 1st Earl of Caithness. This shared common ancestor with Niven in
the 1400s helps us understand what a genetic distance of 3
means
in this project. This is the power of DNA when paired with good
documents research. Understanding this timing is a very important
discovery for the project as a whole as I’ve seen no research
on
the subject of genetic distances beyond 2 and how far back in time they
might point.

The prevailing attitude on the Family Tree DNA website is that if
you’re not a genetic distance of two or less,
you’re likely
not related. This has rubbed me the wrong way since we began this
project. I suspected that families as old as ours are rare in the
Family Tree DNA database. For families that know they go back only to
the 1700’s, it makes sense that they look at a genetic
distance
of 2. But for families that go back as far as ours, it makes much more
sense to look at genetic distances of 3 and 4.

William the Conqueror
connection

If the stories are true, and if R.W. Saint-Clair's book is accurate,
then the true Earldom Lineage must descend
from William the Conqueror. So if we examine those lineages who seem to
connect to the legitimate descendants of the Conqueror, we might be
getting closer. As you'll see in that section at the link at left, this
isn't as easy as it sounds.

The Irish possibility

The fact that Ian’s line went to Ireland at the time of
Charles
II (1660-1685) is interesting in that Ian is not connecting to the
other known lines of Sinclairs there. Clearly, there were many sources
of our family in Ireland. We now have 3 that are genetically very
distant from one another, yet all living in Ireland at some time. Could
all these families have arrived in Ireland with the Ulster Scots? We
simply don't yet know.

The family story of the Earl Who Fled, in the links above at left, is
another possibility for a connection back to the Earldom Lineage. The
group I call the Irish Lineage is seeking out this trail and finding
some interesting supporting evidence both in Ireland and in Argyle.

A McQuiston Connection

About two years into the project, I received a lengthy email from a man
named Jim McQuiston. It seems there is a story in his family that the
Earl of Caithness had impregnated a McQuiston female. He asked if I
thought this was true. My reply was that DNA doesn’t lie. Now
it
could be written off to be an Atlantic Modal Haplogroup match, but I
doubt it. We’ve got the story, the geography and the DNA all
adding credence to the result. Many legends are true. That plus the DNA
match could mean we descend from whoever was the Earl in the
1400’s. But, then, why don’t we
more
closely match Niven and Ian Clennel? Niven and Ian Clennel
don’t
match the McQuiston name. Could there have been something funny going
on with the Earldom lineage itself? Or is Rhondo's explaination above,
a well-known truth in our family, the explaination? Are several of our
lineages connecting to the Earldom Lineage?

In this world of DNA, it seems like
there’s
very
little solid ground on which to stand. All around us is moving.